Inspiration is but fleeting:
A flinching moment in the night.
Its carnal tongue preceding
The shiftless cardinal sin of SIGHT
So with these winds of discontent
I’ll wander aimlessly in search
Of rabble-rousing wonderment
To inflame these embers wracked
With soot.
Because in your absence, in this wake
A flame refuses to unfurl.
IT languishes in malady
Tepid in its stubborn coil
And in this flaccid freedom,
I’m untended in respite.
As in this tone-deaf melody,
An opus spurns its heights.
Woman: You may be a shadow known as Kerouac Steinbeck Celine. I see similarities as people and prophets. Maybe that merely means you’re a writer, as they were.
Man: That was a very lovely thing to say. You are beautiful.
Woman: Thank you, sir.
Man: You already knew that though, right?
Woman: Sometimes.
Man: Coyness is becoming.
Woman: Coyness? More like the assessment of a self critical writer. You know what that’s like.
Man: Possibly. Well, then I will boost your ego so you don’t have to.
Woman: Hhhmmm…I’ll allow that, I suppose.
Man: You suppose? I will not accept suppose.
Woman: Alright then, sir: you have free rein.
Man: Thank you. Even though you seem reluctant.
Woman: I’m just a cautious gal these days. But seeing as you have precedent, well, it’s fair to assume you’re a safe haven.
Man: Caution is good. I would hate to catch you off guard; it would ruin my image of you. And yes, I am a haven.
Woman: My guard is rarely off. And god forbid I ruin images. Yes, you are a haven for some things.
Man: Some things.
Woman: Yes. The others are the ones that I hold; Me, Myself, and I.
Man: Fair enough. I’ll take what I can get.
Woman: You and me both.
Man: You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?
Woman: Eh…words just flow when you’re on the other end of a thought. Not clever, just receptive.
Man: Well, I think you’re clever. And elusive.
Woman: Thank you, sir. I’m only elusive to people who see ghosts.
Man: I guess that’s me.
Woman: I guess it is. I do live in the same city as you.
Man: You do. Maybe we should serendipitously run into one another.
Woman: I do adore that word: serendipitous. But I have little faith in things that are fated because I’ve no patience for broken promises. I live here and now.
Man: I’m thinking I should read into that message.
Woman: No. It’s all just words. Sparring, if you will. Click your heels three times and I may appear.
Man: Click. Click. Click. So…
Woman: Ha. Click them when I’m not in the southern part of the state.
Man: Fuck. I though magic wasn’t confined to regions?
Woman: Well, click them when you actually want to see me. Even magic has its realities and preferences.
Man: I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to see you. Magic is not nearly as cool as I thought.
Woman: Tell me about it. Well, I spend my Monday’s writing and reading in the secluded park off the lake. You could magically see me there, feasibly.
Man: I could. It’s far, but I could. Is there a time that would be best for a magical encounter?
Woman: Around noon. Provided you arrive by unicorn.
Man: Planning on it. And then you can meet my new pet: Do-do bird.
Woman: I’m not sure whether or not I’m hoping that’s a mataphor.
Man: Is that like Spanish comparison: mataphor? And you should hope it is.
Woman: I do enjoy a good bullfight as the sun also rises. Good luck finding me. I’ll be the girl surrounded by linguistic fairy dust.
Man: Sounds hot.
Woman: That’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Man: Well, these eyes think so.
Woman: Thank you, kind sir’s eyes.
Man: They say “You are welcome.”
And what if I see you
Standing on the corner of that busy street
Not far from your home
Lips slightly parted
In anticipation
Of that faithful Cigarette?
I will mouth “I’m Sorry”
And watch you walk away.
We women are fragment Gildas.
Our bodies are our pawns, our zippers autocratic.
And we despise the men we love.
As they despise themselves.
The next branding is nigh.
As we stray and straighten the curve of our spines
In preparation for some unholy communion of minds
With its unattached perils
Its preacherless podiums
And unfettered agendas
Every maker has his mark.
The next branding is nigh.
There had been a fight. About dust-bowls and glass menageries.
Some of her pages had been torn in the process. Ink was now misconstrued.
So she made him exit her disheveled twin-cab.
He was swallowed whole in the night,
Folded into its turgid presence.
As street lamps stood idly by.
Monolithic watchmen in the fog.
Remnants of the break in days.
Placation and Separation in this tempestuous calm had taught her not to right wrongs.
Not look behind.
Not to stare ahead.
But she’ll testify. She will speak.
Her eyes disconcert their brown. This the first indication, a
readiness to engage, obvious intelligence, which, combined with her complexion,
heightens the factory noise.
Fan blades strobe the light in the rafters.
By concentrating I can hear
my own voice, a reminder
to be serious.
She stands loose-jointed not really listening.
Safety regs.
OSHA.
Comp.
I feel myself slow down
Her nametag’s obliterated
by oil, hair pulled under
her hat. Despite coveralls,
I can trace the shape of her body.
The body expresses an idea of the shape of the person inside.
Dominic the semi-retard beside
her has been injured twice. First
by a flat of iron that fell off
some forks near the dock, second
when he let his finger stray
into the shear-press. Less
than 600 dollars sick
pay and it couldn’t
be reattached.
For a moment she seems to acknowledge me.
It’s like watching sheetglass collapse.
There are lights on right now in rooms where loved ones no longer live; there is movement that traces the spectral recesses of past movements. But those halls don’t whistle and moan like they once did; the air is permeated with a distinctly new effervescence.
We pull and we break. Our tidewaters recede in a process that’s forgotten to pair a flow to its ebb. We stop and stare at open doors and unencumbered passageways with incredulous immobility, yet practically impale ourselves on the victorian knockers of the doors that are closed to us–we make ourselves the battering rams, we choose the presence of a foe.
Regardless of clutter, regardless of the vain attempts to occupy every bit of space around me in order to keep something unquantifiable at bay, I found myself mired in it. Things had surrounded me; people had abandoned me; regrets accumulated. The price of these insulating materials had gone up, driven by speculation and pivoting on a recessed market that inspired nothing; frequently undue panic became the harbinger of all the uncontrolled elements that existed around me–the very plasmatic particles that built the air through which I waded.
I foresaw nothing and began to want less, which was the key to surviving this tainted fray, this dishonorable fracas. Who I was didn’t translate well to the dailies, so I concocted a Self that did. I was thorough in my transformation.
Even when Lem’s thugs dragged Jones from the forest
I didn’t believe him dead. His long body, meat now,
and in that heat swollen by dusk. The garish epaulettes,
the ridiculous sash, gone.
Not even boots. That’s it then, I thought,
no gunboat to Martinique.
Some mornings I’d find him on the terrace, rambling.
That Irishman, he would say, just wrote it; I
am the Emperor Jones. He drank and shouted parts from MacBeth,
threw bottles at the boy, demanded we play dice. How
he loathed my white skin.
In his wicker chair, dripping sweat,
he told me I was a ghost.
In a Water Street pub a rummy named Walters reported Jones had survived.
He left the island on a tramp for Havana and was sighted in New York
on a streetcar or in an opium den.
I didn’t know what to believe.
Then Walters remarked the Irishman.
A tall man who coughed as he drank brandy-soda
bragged in a bar he owned Brutus Jones.
‘I made that black bastard a king,’ he said
just before he walked out.
I left the island a fortnight after the Americans landed.
They quickly disarmed Lem’s army
though it is said his nephews escaped.
Boarding the launch I saw
a line of natives strung
together with rope, waiting
while a marine
issued them shovels and picks.
In a doorway, a woman
bobbed,
tucking a child behind her skirt.
The barefoot policeman rested,
next to a wagon of ice.
What allows us to fix our eyes firmly on the horizon despite the illogical, mind numbing pain of existence, the laborious process of breathing? Heaven and hell are barely deterents as the threat of either are pale reflections of our own ineptitude, our own inability to seek wholeness on earth in the here and the now. This world, however, is breathtaking- both negatively and positively. It’s true, the pressure of our surroundings can be exhausting with the steam wilting our lives, our souls. But its the humidity that keeps our gaze uplifted, looking onward albeit with slight immobility.
He is that cool breeze that lulls me in chaos of those hot hot Los Angeles nights. The dew on my lips, the gauze over my lids- the thick black molases that highlights the softest of my edges, sludged into the recesses of my fears and insecurities and affording me sweet respite. In his pain I hear the tender hum of clarity- my counterweight, my palindrome. He is beautiful, he is rare and he is also not mine to love. He is the orbit I’ve sought my entire life, but I’m still a sphere amongst myself unable to be leashed.
Infinite octaves of aesthetics and density, rapidity and light, serenity and delineation- unbridled, complex, and replete with the brevity of disdain.
His heritage, his heart, his singular allegorical gaze will forever hold me. It’s the way he moves with a self conscious, humble precision and an ebuillient two-step charge. It’s the simple integrity of the ink that claims his skin. Most importantly, it’s the way he is able to know me merely by knowing himself.
He was succulent in every word and every way. In fact, he was more so the farther away he aimlessly strolled with his hands clasped loosely behind his back and his feet dragging contemptuously in the dirt. His tracks overlapped and obliterated his predecessors. He pulled at threads constantly: loosely unraveling the interwoven shreds of his mind– his childhood, his love of monarch butterflies, his crimson ’67 Ford Falcon, the black monotony of his wardrobe, the tarnished silver of his father’s wedding ring, his sister’s collection of Marilyn Monroe anti-epics, the confusion that is the phenomenon of picture within a picture, the self-contained euphoria in a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, his apathetic hatred of all things vegetable, his preference for the pictures that came with store bought picture frames instead of his own, his love of music that is uncorrupted by lyrics, his mission to erradicate the nation of all gyms but especially the ones entirely surrounded by windows, his mother’s vain attempts to tame the cowlicks at the foremost center of his hairline when he was smaller, the way his handwriting changed everytime and refused to repeat itself, his pathological admiration of maps of all sizes and hues, the way chalk from a rosin bag smelled after it combined with his sweat and his blood, and what else, well, the depths are too damp to fully explore. He attracted and released his women at a rate that would alarm some and amuse others. His dark dark sweaters were pilled with the memory of movements that had come before and stayed with him despite his best attempts to evade them. He prefered to fidget and indulge his oral fixation in any way available to him. He was a cardigan sweater man, through and through.
